Acoustic Software Reviews

Acoustic measuring software & accessories review site.

Welcome to Acoustic Software Reviews!

My goal here is to gather as much information in one place as possible, around the area of acoustic measureing software – software designed to measure acoustic properties of your room, car, studio, etc..

You’ll find a list of all known applications (Windows, Mac and iPhone) under the ‘The List’ link above.

There’s information about the equipment you’ll need under ‘Getting Started’.

Lastly there’s a few reviews under ‘Reviews’

Below are the latest posts, comments reviews etc…

Updates.

Feb 1

Posted by Jack in news | No Comments

A few updates to a few apps have come out -

AudioTools by studio Six digital got a nice update to 1.2,

AudioScope, Spectogram, BS-Spectrum have all had minor udates.

On the mac front, version 3.2 of FuzzMeasurePro has been released, after a series of over a dozen beta releases.

Look for a video overview of FuzzMeasurePro on this site.

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FuzzMeasurePro for Mac (Partial Review)

Jan 31

Posted by Jack in Mac | 2 Comments

Product: FuzzMeasure Pro
Author: SuperMegaUltraGrovy
Website: http://www.supermegaultragroovy.com/products/FuzzMeasure/
Reviewed: FuzzMeasurePro version 3.2

**
Note:
I started this review back in November 2009 and then got sidetracked with other activities. I don’t foresee having the time to do up a full reviews with screenshots until summer of 2010, so in the mean time, I’m posting what I wrote back in November. Fuzzmeasure is great, my review might not show off the awesomeness that Fuzzmeasure has to offer as much as it should…
**

Fuzzmeasure Pro is an Acoustic Measuring program for the Macintosh.

I’ve long held the belief that there’s sophistication in simplicity. If you download the demo of Fuzzmeasure and take a quick measurement, you’d likely come away thinking that Fuzzmeasure is a simple program. Herein lies it’s sophistication – Fuzzmeasure actually has a fair number of chart types, options, features, etc… all hidden behind an interface so simple, it’s possible you’ve not seen all it can do.

Fuzzmeasure does a number of things right, and with a style and grace that I haven’t seen on any other software. It’s user interface has a nice simplicity – click a button to measure – the response shows up on the bottom. Yet there’s more that Fuzzmeasure has to offer – measure again, and you’ll automatically get a new chart in a new color, and you’ll see little mini charts on the left hand side. Hold the shift key or Command key while clicking on the little charts and you can see multiple responses in a single graph. Select two or more and you can do things like Averaging – great if you’ve taken 3 sets of measurements from each location and want to take an average of the 3 to represent that location. Also within the simple interface is the ability to produce a variety of line graphs – not just Frequency response.

Once you’ve taken a measurement (or set of measurements), you can save it/them for later analysis or inspection. All of your measurements are saved to the same ‘document’ making it easy to save a series of measurements and bring them up later. Fuzzmeasure has a lot of ‘hidden’ features up its sleeves – for example, you can open more than one ‘document’ at a time, and drag and drop measurements from one document to another – this is perfect if you started by taking a LOT of measurements and now want to create a smaller subset of data (for example if you were going to show a client)

Of use to professionals, is the ability to capture multiple inputs at the same time – say you have an 8 port Firewire audio device, you can connect 8 microphones to it, locate them at different points in the room, and get readings from all of them at the same time.

Outside of the main window interface, there are a few ‘plug ins’ that open separate windows – there’s a waterfall graph, a Reverberation Time display and also an impedance window handy for finding the Q of a loudspeaker.

-Fuzzmeasure is a play/record/analyze type system.  Basically what that means is, the software plays a test tone which you run through the system being tested, and while it’s playing the tone, it is also recording, and after it’s done there’s a short bit of analysis done on the recorded input. While I like mostly everything about fuzzmeasure, it should be noted that it’s impossible to use it in any type of real time capability. It’s also impossible to analyze a recording and break down the frequencies found in it.  The positive side of the play/record/analyze system is that Fuzzmeasure allows you to export the test signal so you can use it for ‘field measurements’ ie you can do the play/record part without the mac, and bring those files back to the mac for the /analyze part.

(Note, I’ve not had time to really finish this review, but felt that the draft above is probably better than nothing, so I’m publishing that for now. I don’t anticipate an update until summer 2010…)

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November is turning out to be a non-productive Audio Review month!

Nov 18

Posted by Jack in news | No Comments

It’s been over a month since my last post here. It may be another at the rate I am going…

I had been reviewing Fuzzmeasure Pro on my home built Macintosh – Unfortunately, the home-built machine suffered from pops and clicks in the audio – over a variety of usb sound cards and applications such as iTunes as well as FuzzMeasure Pro. It wasn’t a show stopper, but the whole arrangement wasn’t super convenient either – I put this little PC on the floor outside my theater room, connected to my AV receiver for sound, and a 25 foot VGA cable took the video back to the projector. Inside the room another 25 foot XLR cable connected the mic to the USB soundcard (a Fastrack Pro) in the area with the receiver.  Then I just needed to control it. I have a nice BlueTooth logitech keyboard with a touch pad for the mouse, but the touch pad wasn’t working with the hacked together mac.

Well, the day finally came and I broke down and bought a 13″ 2.53 Ghz Macbook Pro – what an awesome laptop – all except one thing, the screen doesn’t have enough resolution – 1280×800 isn’t bad for word processing or light web browsing, but I had an itch to have a bigger screen. A week later and the store near me put the 15 inch on sale for nearly what I paid for the 13 and I had to upgrade. A few days after that, the 15″ died and I had to get it replaced. Getting one new computer is fun, 3 in a row, and the glamor of that new machine starts to wear down quickly. Hopefully the 3rd time is a charm and I can get back to life as usual.

So hopefully I’ll get back to the Fuzzmeasure review soon (if you’re curious, download the demo, it’s an awesome program which I can easily and unconditionally reccomend well before my formal review is complete) After Fuzzmeasure, I had hoped to aquire a few more iPhone acoustic apps in the $20-25 range. Also I’ve been looking at search statistics and I still get a good number of hit’s for TrueRTA. So I’d like to re-visit that and freshen up that review a bit.

If you have any nagging questions about acoustics software, you can leave a comment or email me at Jack@AcousticSoftwareReviews.com

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AudioTools 1.2 for iPhone released

Oct 11

Posted by Jack in Uncategorized, iPhone | No Comments

No Sooner was the Audio Tools 1.1 for the iPhone software reviewed here and version 1.2 has been released.

New in this release are the option to buy 2 more add in modules:
- Distortion (for calculating Distortion of a driver)
- SPL Graph – which I have been playing with and hope to review soon.

Version 1.2 also adds offical support for the iPod Touch 3G, as well as some minor bug fixes.

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AudioTools Review posted!

Oct 5

Posted by Jack in news | No Comments

AudioTools for iPhone Main Page

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The review of AudioTools 1.1 is now posted!

http://acousticsoftwarereviews.com/review/iphone/audiotools-1-1-for-iphone-review/


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Update – FuzzMeasure Pro 3 is AWESOME!

Sep 29

Posted by Jack in news | No Comments

I must confess I haven’t started writing the review of FuzzMeasure Pro. I’ve been too busy using it!

This past weekend, I used Fuzzmeasure Pro to analyze he placement of the subwoofer in my home theater. I tried a handful of locations, and Fuzzmeasure helped me find the one with the best comprimise (I wasn’t able to get the response flat, but there were some placement locations that had smoother response than others.) The great thing about FuzzMeasure is how easily it lets you overlay multiple measurements so you can visually see where the differences are. It’s really got to be seen to be understood. I’m hoping to do a short video to supplement the review so you can see the program in action.

I’ve also made some headway on the iPhone app reviews of the Studio Six Digital apps so those should start to post soon.

- Jack

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New reviews in the works

Sep 22

Posted by Jack in news | No Comments

I’ve been working on a few new reviews as of lately.

I’m having a great time checking out FuzzMeasurePro on the Mac – It’ looks like a great product and one that is truely usable.

The other app I have on the bench is an iPhone suite called AudioTools This one also looks very promising.

I hope to have at least one of these reviews up within the next week or so

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AudioTools updated to v1.1

Sep 19

Posted by Jack in news | No Comments

Studio Six Digital has released an update to it’s AudioTools suite for the iPhone.

For those not familiar with AudioTools, it is a bundle product, much like Microsoft Office, comprised of a few of Studio Six Digital’s Acoustics applications.

This release includes a new app: Audio Scope rounding out the already included RTA, SPL Meter, Generator, and Line Level.
The app supports in-app expansion purchases – which now included the option to purchases ETC, in addition to FFT,  SPL Pro and Polarity which were available as add-ons in the last release.

Interesting to note is that Studio Six Digital released AudioTools as a workaround to some Apple restictions. They have been working on a calibrated mic for some time – one that uses the iPod’s 30 pin connector. Apple currently limits accessories using the doc connector to a single application. Studio Six Digital has 9 different audio apps, and wanted it’s users to be able to use the mic with more than one app! The solution was to release an extendable suite, and that’s what AudioTools is.

I highly recommend AudioTools and look forward to bringing more information on the Microphone when it is released.

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Awesome video showing iPhone hookup and calibration

Sep 18

Posted by Jack in news | No Comments

Ben Faber at Faber Acoustical has put together an excellent video showing how to connect up an iPhone to a multimeter in order to calibrate it.  It’s a great video and shows how easy it is to connect to and calibrate the iPhone’s inputs and outputs. It should be noted that Calibration is not a core feature of the iPhone, but of each Acoustical App – Not all apps have the ability to be calibrated.

 http://www.faberacoustical.com/Downloads/movies/iphone/IOScopeImpedance/index.php

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iPhone app reviews coming soon…

Sep 13

Posted by Jack in news | No Comments

There are a number of iPhone apps out there for measuring acoustics,

I’ve tried a few including the RTA app from Studio Six Digital, Audio Scope and BS-Spectrum.

After I restore the content from the old acoustics Software Review site, the iPhone section will be the first area that gets attention…

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